“I am still a little pissed off” – McGillvary still struggling from injury caused by hip drop tackle

In 2022, Jermaine McGillvary suffered a nasty injury as consequence to a hip drop tackle from Morgan Knowles and the same has happened to Mike Cooper.

Thus, McGillvary has been out spoken about the tackle type and opened up on how he nearly retired because of the tackle:

“It is awful, it is a tackle where the tackler doesn’t have control of their body and their weight is going through you.

“Lucky for me, it was an unlucky tackle, that I got to play on because if it was a my ACL I am going to have to retire and it would take me 12 months to recover.

“I was going to retire, but luckily it was just a broken leg, a ruptured MCL, PCL, and my ACL was swollen and the surgeon said it was a miracle it didn’t go.

“Still to this day I can’t straighten my right knee from that.

“I have seen a few comments saying it is a contact sport, but the same thing has happened to another player who is the same age as me and is he going to have to retire because of that.

“I would have retired if I had suffered that injury.”

He doesn’t think however, that it was intentional from Knowles:

“Did Morgan Knowles mean to do it? I Don’t think he did. I don’t know him personally, I know the Head Coach at Saints and some of the boys and some of them are the most professional in the game, I don’t think he meant to do it but it is just a poor selection of a tackle technique.

“Sometimes it is tough in the heat of the moment and we are all putting our bodies on the line.

That said, McGillvary expects the tackle to impact the quality of his life after playing:

“When I retire, I am not going to have a physio to help me loosen up my knee so I don’t know what my quality of life will be after I retire with this leg, it is sore every morning. Will it get better in time, I doubt it?

“Is it just a shit thing but I don’t think anyone means to do it.

“I had two operations on my knee and it is still not right so I am still a little pissed off with that, but it is what it is.”